When the Amazing Spider-Man first debuted in the early 1960s, one of the most significant storylines involved the secret identity of the green and purple -clad villain, the Green Goblin. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko would often show the character in shadow or his face obscured, teasing readers who were dying to figure out the identity of this mystery man. Fast forward nearly 50 years later: Dan Slott and the rest of the Superior Spider-Mans creative team managed to recapture the magic of the Green Goblin mystery, but this time for an audience that had more instantaneous outlets to communicate and speculate with each other. Whenever the goblin mystery was teased by Slott, fans would immediately take to Twitter and message boards speculating about who was running around the Marvel Universe calling himself the Goblin King? Was it the original Goblin, Norman Osborn? His son Harry? His daughter-in-law Liz Allan? His grandson Normie? A clone? A robot? Slott himself? And like any good yard-spinner, any time it looked like the case was cracked, Slott introduced new information just to throw readers off the scent.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
